Eclipsing a Star
by Enferfeu
Summary: A thousand years after the events of "A New Hope" sees the age old struggle between good and evil personified in the struggle for dominance between the light and dark side. Friendships are made and broken in a time that will decide the fate of the galaxy.
1. Prologue: Blood in the Sand

**Hey guys, this is the begining of a Star Wars fanfic I have written. I have no idea when I'll get around to continuing it, but I promise it will not take more then a month (lol) As my first fanfic, I hope you guys will not be too punishing in your reviews. =**)

**I dedicate this to Bryan Potts, for showing me how nice it is to be nice. **

Prologue: Blood in the Sand

Sand clogged my throat. Sand, and blood. I tried to spit out the offending substances from my partially supine position. The elbows that attempted to hold my upper body up trembled. My body screamed for rest, it shouted for release, it prayed for death. How hard it is to resist that which your body wants.

But I wouldn't give up, I couldn't. If I failed, that was it. There was no one else. It was up to me, it had always been up to me. If I had seen that sooner…

But such somber thoughts weren't constructive, I picked my head up and opened my eyes. One was swollen, I could tell it, so I could barely even see out of it. The first thing my failing eyes noticed were the boots. Boots as black as night, with iron rings that hung in a vertical pattern down each side. The man bent his knees enough so his face was visible. My blurry vision unable to make out the features my brain had learned to memorize through hate. All I could tell was that he was smirking. There he stood, amidst the greatest battle in a thousand years, and yet he still felt the need to laugh at my fate. How little had changed in this, one of the most turbulent periods of galactic history.

In anger I sent a jab at him with the Force, a futile attempt that even I knew was pointless. My enemy flicked it aside lazily, not even fully moving his shoulder to brush off the weak blast. The road had ended for me, all the work, the training, the learning, the hoping and the dreaming had amounted to this. Blood in the sand.

My hearing had been the first to go, the screaming of my allies no longer heard due to my damaged eardrums. How slightly he moved his hand, barley even making the chocking motion that was guiding the Force to cut the supply of oxygen traveling to my air pipe. My elbows gave way, allowing my face to smash into the sandy plateau our battle had brought us.

Time slowed,_ so this is the place _I thought, this is where I was to die. This is where the last hope of humanity ended. In a fallen man.

Then my sense of touch numbed, and finally my sight tunneled. My whole world consisted of the blurred sight of a man who would be my murderer. I thought of my life, and the man who was attempting to smother it.

Red hot anger swelled up in my belly. And then a voice from long ago urged me to use the emotion to my advantage. My sight changed again, it looked as though I stared through a red film.

I thought about the day my life changed, a change that was fated to bring me to this spot, on this day, to this end.

And I got an idea.

One I never would have even considered had I not been in the predicament I was in now.


	2. Chapter 1: Instinctual

Instinctual

I nervously blew the shrill metallic whistle at the last possible second. I was unsure on the call, and walked slowly up to the ball to hide my confusion. A Cerean father eyed me disapprovingly, seeing through what my Gamorrean-like speed hid. _Bloody cone-heads, think they know it all. _Despite my annoyance, the Cerean had a point; I had no idea to which team the ball rightfully belonged to.

I picked up the roughly seventy two centimeter circumference ball, spinning it on the palm of my rather sweaty palm in an effort to buy yet more time. The feel of the Sullust leather specially made for the outer shell of the ball calmed me slightly. It was a nice slippery smooth, personified by the glaze like white that covered the majority of the ball.

Taking a deep breath, I sought a way to calm myself further. For a moment, I stood in a moment of indecision, unsure whom I would give the ball to. I had no idea on the proper call, but a small little nudging sensation in my gut inspired me to give it to the black team.

I obeyed my instincts, and declared it, "Black ball!" As was the norm, the parents of the children on the yellow team and the players themselves let out a grumble of disapproval, while the black team and their parents smiled excitedly.

No open disagreements. No exasperated youths declaring it clearly belonged to them. No way had my instincts failed me. No reason to worry.

It was funny how stressing reffing a recreational football match for a bunch of younglings could be.

To think, I had signed on thinking this would be an easy job. After the first game that was placed under my charge, I had an epiphany. Two to be precise. One; there is no such thing as an easy job, and Two; if I had a choice between wearing those damn "oversight" goggles used to control the repulsorlift packs and being eaten and slowly digested by the legendary Sarlacc on Tatooine, I would chose the Sarlacc.

Twice.

But, I regress, at this level at the very least; the referees were not required to wear those damn goggles. To solve the age old problem of referees missing plays because of their distance or angle of sight, someone had come up with the brilliant idea of giving the refs the ability to _fly._ I dream that the individual who invented the controlling goggles is stuck inside a black hole, unable to die.

The goggles connected with the repulpack using the referee's eyes. A double blink would engage it, sending it up at its first setting, only two feet off the ground. Another double blink after the first would send it to its second and last setting, eight feet off the ground. Leaning in any direction would move you in that direction. In truth it wasn't a horrible idea, but the goggles… In order for the senor to pick up the blinks, the eyewear was tightened almost to the point of crushing the eyes. One might not think the slight pressure would be uncomfortable, but one might never have had the rotten luck to have worn them for an hour straight.

I have never, will never, wear or will ever think of an article of clothing more uncomfortable then the damn oversight goggles. But comfort wasn't even the worst part of the goggles. Imagine placing your head next to a malfunctioning droid screeching and you can imagine the intense headache you would obtain from the goggles. The problem was, in order to ref older age groups one must wear the repulpacks, and by extension, those goggles. It might pay more, but it didn't pay _that _much more. One of my fellow referees had once deftly described them as goggles that made the Celegians, those damn floating brains, thankful they didn't have eyes.

Nonchalantly I watched one of the younglings fall as a result of their infinite clumsiness. I really hated breaking up the action because someone fell, so I just glared at him until he got up. The kid was a small framed human boy who, if you asked me, had not been playing for the whole game. Despite the fact his team only just had the bare minimum to play. As he rose from his previous supine position I noticed a rather nasty bruise on his forearm. The plasteel under the fake grass could be punishing if you fell the wrong way. With mud people slid, with plasteel people bled. But apparently, according to the powers that be anyway, slipping is much worse. I truly wonder if the Galactic Association for Football, or GAF, just created these absurd rules and regulations as a joke to see if the rest of the Galaxy really would obey them.

Calmly I watched a Human boy on the black team trap the ball with the inside of his right foot, and run up the field towards the yellow goal. He passed up to a Cerean, who proceeded to position his body in-between his defender and the ball. It was a very funny sight, the Cerean utilized all of his bodily assets, including the elongated skull, to keep the human from stealing it from him. The only problem was the Cerean boy's cushioned headband used for protection for the top of his head had slipped down slightly, coving his left eye. What he didn't see, and I clearly did, was that another yellow-aligned Human was running to steal the ball from his distracted, and half blind enemy. As he began to converge on the unsuspecting Cerean, I, from my vantage point, saw a small Bothan position himself near the goal.

And then it happened.

The small Bothan, summoning up his courage, called for the ball. The Cerean, in a happy coincidence to ascertain the source of the call, lifted his head just enough so that a small part of his left eye appeared from underneath his headband. Apparently it was enough; the Cerean executed a clever faint, causing the Human boy to run the wrong way. Making his papa proud, the very one who had eyed me so disapprovingly before, he faked the shot, off-balancing the four-armed Besalisk keeper, and passed to the small Bothan.

I raised the whistle to my lips, preparing to signal the successful goal. The Bothan, not wasting a second in theatrics, blasted the shot. It was low and fast, and speeding towards the right bottom corner. I sucked in the air I would need for a jarring high pitched whistle blow that would declare the shot had been made, that the black team had bested the yellow.

For the moment at least.

And yet, the moment after I gathered the oxygen, I expelled it. Something told me it wouldn't be necessary.

The Besalisk apparently agreed with my instinct. He dove to his right, planting his lower left hand on the ground. By doing so, the young Besalisk gave himself the leverage he needed to move his upper left hand that extra inch he needed. By the very tips of his fingers, the keeper succeeded in his task. He kept the ball out of the net. A yellow defender rushed in and blasted the ball out of his team's danger zone.

As soon as it entered the airspace, I glanced at my stopwatch. It read:

**61:13 **

_Sixty-one minutes! I could have ended it a minute ago?_ I thought, exasperated and disgruntled I could have been one my way to the spaceport a minute earlier. Wasting no further time I blew the whistle three times. One short, the other for a half a second longer, and the last note I blew for nearly a full ten seconds. I shook hands with both coaches, congratulating them on a game well played.

My mind was nowhere even near the quick conversations I was having with the two coaches. It was one of those dialogues that you know you had but don't remember a single word of it. I nodded and gave a small half smile without even opening my mouth as the two talked at me, telling me I did a good job as social and professional etiquette dictated.

My mind was far beyond the banter. My eyes no longer saw the physical world around me, my brain had placed what might has well been a screen over them. On this screen, the magic of the mind played a steady stream of images. My childhood.

A great oak tree, branches that twisted around each other in gnarled knots, each branch doing whatever it could to receive the life giving light from above. The tree was large enough that my arms could not wrap around it, so in my limited six year old vocabulary, it was big. The leaves that every so often would fall to earth due to a gust of wind danced in a cheerful decent towards the dirt at the tree's feet. The tree was our favorite spot, it was where our imaginations created and helped us destroy the evil Sith lords, the crazed rancors, and the uncaring Hutts. It was by that tree I felt like the galaxy wasn't nearly as immense as many a teacher had led me to believe.

It was there I forgot the horrors of my young life. It was there I had met my first true friend.

And now he was returning. What I had wanted the minute he left Bakura's atmosphere nine years ago was now happening.

He was coming home.

And yet for all my happiness, I could not shake a disconcerting feeling deep down. Something was wrong, or was about to be wrong, or had gone wrong. But I kept my half smile going, I was just nervous I told myself.

The Cerean father who had annoyed me throughout the whole game with his snide remarks and facial expressions walked over to the spot I had occupied only five seconds before. But I was nowhere to found.

I was already in my land speeder, driving 40 klicks over the speed limit.

The shuttle that was due to arrive at the spaceport in ten minutes was just too important. If nothing had come up, I would be reunited with my best friend in the galaxy.

There was plenty of time for apologies later.

**I apolygize all for just barely meeting my deadline of a month and only writing a little under 2,000 words. This chapter gave me no end of headaches, and went throught five major revisions and countless smaller ones. **

**It can be difficult to start of a story. Thank you for being patient, and I expect chapter 2 will be up in roughly two weeks.**

**Please review.  
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